A joint group of researchers from the Netherlands and the US have smashed the world speed record for a fiber network, pushing 255 terabits per second down a single strand of glass fiber. This is equivalent to around 32 terabytes per second  enough to transfer a 1GB movie in 31.25 microseconds (0.03 milliseconds), or alternatively, the entire contents of your 1TB hard drive in about 31 milliseconds.

To put 255Tbps into perspective, the fastest single-fiber links in commercial operation top out at 100Gbps, or 2,550 times slower. 255Tbps is mindbogglingly quick; its greater, by far, than the total capacity of every cable  hundreds of glass fibers  currently spanning the Atlantic Ocean. In fact, 255 terabits per second is similar to  or maybe even more than  the total sum of all traffic flowing across the internet at peak time.